Homemade Chicken Stock Recipe

Have you kept up with your New Year’s Resolution of eating healthy or preparing a Sunday night family meal?

After roasting a chicken, make sure to save those bones to make your own stock.

If you want to continue with your promise to use less preservatives, and make more ‘home made’ food, this recipe is for you – Home Made Chicken Stock!

Roasting a chicken is a great way to make that heart healthy family comfort meal in the middle of winter. However, you can take it one step further by not throwing away those chicken bones and make your own chicken stock to freeze and use whenever you need it. Best of all, you will know exactly what ingredients are in it. No more excessive sodium, flavor enhancers, or preservatives – just great natural flavor!

Although there are several ways to make your own chicken stock, I prefer this method simply because its a great chance to clean out left behind celery stalks, carrots, and onions in the kitchen. It also of course, makes great use of the chicken carcass left over from a roasted chicken.

Don’t worry if you don’t have enough time or left over veggies to make the chicken stock right away – you can simply place the chicken bones in a resealable bag, freeze it, and its ready whenever you are. This chicken stock recipe takes several hours to slow cook for great flavor, so it’s is a perfect recipe to complete on a cold winter day when you don’t want to go outside anyway!

Chicken Stock Recipe

Ingredients

Ingredients simmering in a large stock pot

Left-over bones and skin from a cooked or raw chicken carcass

Celery – use the center of the celery stalk instead of throwing it in the compost pile

Onions

Carrots – yes, even those dry-looking baby carrots in the back of your refrigerator drawer

Parsley

Salt

Pepper

Directions:

Strain the pot to leave only the liquid – the Perfect Chicken Stock!

1 Put the leftover bones and skin from a chicken carcass into a large stock pot and cover with cold water. Add veggies like celery, onion, carrots, parsley. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

2 Bring to a boil and immediately reduce heat to bring the stock to barely a simmer. Simmer uncovered for at least 4 hours, occasionally skimming off the foam that comes to the surface.

We freeze our stock in blocks to be later stored in Food Saver bags for long-term storage.

3 Remove the bones and strain the stock.

4 You can store in the refrigerator for up to a week, or store in the freezer for months.

For a terrific cold & flu buster – you can use that homemade chicken stock soup recipe for our Chicken Jalapeno Soup, you can find the recipe here: Chicken Jalapeno Soup Recipe

Enjoy!

Mary and Jim

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18 Comments on Homemade Chicken Stock Recipe

Contrary to recipes, I do not salt my stock, or anything I cook for that matter. I find if I do, it doesn’t taste salted, so I add more at the table, thereby double salting, raising the sodium in the food. I learned this years ago. Salt for taste at the table. I’ve been making stock from turkey legs or wings for about 20 years. I roast the meats for about 2 hours; deglaze the pan they were roasted in with 2 cups water, then add the legs, deglazed water mixture, a whole onion, 2-3 carrots (broken) and celery to a very large stockpot with about 3.5 quarts of water and let it come to a boil. Turn it down and let it simmer for 6 hours, then remove from heat and pour the solids through a colander into another large bowl or pot to cool. If done in the winter, I use my deck as a refrigerator and let everything cool outside until I can separate the fat from the stock, pour into containers and freeze. I discard all solids, as they no longer have any flavor. I also like to put some into ice cube trays, because sometimes you need just a little to deglaze a pan.

I love to do this by throwing a frozen whole chicken in the crock pot all day. I then make my own stock by throwing the carcass, carrots, celery ends, onion ends and herbs back in the crock and let it cook on low over-night. You wake up to an AMAZING smell filling the house. I strain and freeze broth in 2 cup measurements, but then throw any bits of meat and veggies back into the 2 cups of broth I leave in the crock pot and make a batch of home made chicken noodle soup, while I’m at it. If we have leftover chicken from the original whole chicken, I throw 2 cups into the soup and freeze the rest in 2 cup measurements for future use in soups, quesadillas, enchiladas, etc. Just throw the noodles in 20 minutes before you want to eat. Freezing meat and broth in 2 cup measurements is a great time (and $$$) saver for future meals. I did this last week and fed my family of 5, four different meals (from 1 chicken).

I do the same thing for the same reasons! I happen to love garlic and onions, so usually throw a whole peeled onion and four or five cloves in the pot as well. And someone else told me if you put a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in (you can’t taste it afterwards) it pulls even more of the good stuff from the bones. Love your website – curious if you have one for your pergola business? Thanks again for great info & encouragement.

I had never heard of the apple cider – we will have to give it a try! As for the pergola business – we do have a site – its http://www.owgarden.com. We are going to start offering the pergola plans for sale for those that live too far away to buy here and want to build their own. Thanks so much for the compliments on the site and for stopping by! Jim

It’s apple cider vinegar – I think apple cider would make it too sweet. As I mentioned in my first comment, it draws the gelatin from the bones and that’s the most nutritious part of the broth. Also, if you leave the onion peels on (except for that first dirty layer of course), they give the broth a deep rich color.